Sunday, June 08, 2014

Ronny Flanagan took pride in his record as a police officer in Plano, Texas. He had an incident-free career. He took safety training regularly. He was known at the range as a very good shot.

Yet he killed a man when he was simply trying to press a flashlight switch mounted beneath the trigger on his pistol.

In a deposition, Flanagan expressed his remorse and made a prediction.

"I don't want anyone to ever sit in a chair I'm in right now," he said. "Think about the officers that aren't as well trained, officers that don't take it as seriously, and you put them in a pressure situation, another accident will happen. Not if, but will."

Flanagan was right. Three months after the October 2010 shooting in Plano, a 76-year-old man took a bullet in the stomach from a New York police officer trying to switch on the same flashlight model.

At least three other people in the U.S. over the past nine years have been shot accidentally by police officers with gun-mounted flashlights, an investigation by The Denver Post found. Two victims were fellow officers.

In Colorado, Denver's police chief banned the use of tactical flashlights with switches below the trigger guard after two officers accidentally fired their guns last year.

One of the officers may have shot a suspect when his finger slipped from the flashlight switch to the trigger, firing a bullet into a car window of the fleeing driver.

Other large Colorado police and sheriff's departments contacted by The Post said they have recorded no flashlight-related accidental gunshots. But many have imposed restrictions similar to Denver's.

The exception is Aurora, Colorado's second-largest city, which allows its 670 police officers to mount any tactical flashlight model and requires no training in their use.

"It just has not been a problem with us," said Frank Fania, a spokesman for the Aurora Police Department. "There is a distinct difference between a switch on our grip versus the gun trigger."

I'm sure Officer Flanagan believed it couldn't happen to him either.

And I don't even want to think about the various yahoos out there fumbling with their "flashlights" in the dark and killing people by accident. But hey, those gun manufacturers have created this toy and these people have a god-given right to use it. It's right there in the 10 Commandments.